The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Friday, October 21, 2016

Two fundamentally different visions of America clash on stage for the last time.

The peculiar self-contradiction of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign was on abundant display Wednesday night during her third and last presidential debate with Donald Trump: running as the anointed heir of a two-term president in whose administration she served, she has to maintain both that everything is going great and that the nation in general is in drastic need of repair. Above all, amid all the bluster and platitudes, she and Trump took up opposing sides on virtually all the major fault lines of contemporary America, emphasizing yet again that this election is for all the marbles: either the U.S. will continue on the road to socialist internationalism, or recover a sense of itself. This may be the last time that question is at stake in a presidential election.“What kind of country are we going to be?,” Hillary Clinton asked near the beginning of the debate, and that indeed was the question. The Supreme Court, she told us, needs to stand on the side of the American people, not on side of the wealthy. What would a Supreme Court that stood on the side of the people, rather than the plutocrats, look like? Why, of course it would be one that said no to Citizen’s United, and yes to Marriage Equality and Roe vs. Wade: as far as Hillary Clinton is concerned, anyone who stands for traditional values is simply not of the people, or any people she has any interest in representing. Nor, presumably, among Hillary Clinton’s people are those who respect and want to uphold the Second Amendment – in which she firmly believes, she assured us Wednesday night, as long as it is gutted of any actual substance.Trump, on the other hand, affirmed that he would appoint justices who would interpret the Constitution as written, repeal Roe v. Wade and return the abortion question to the states, and protect gun rights. Chicago, he pointed out, has some of the nation’s toughest gun laws, yet also has more gun violence than any other city. This was a telling point; in response, Clinton promised she would give us both the Second Amendment and “reform,” but did not explain how this sleight-of-hand would be performed.The situation was the same when the topic turned to immigration. Trump spoke of the need for strong borders, pointing to the drugs pouring into the country over the Mexican border as the reason why a border wall was needed, and declaring: “We have no country if we have no border.” In response, Clinton spoke about not wanting to send illegal immigrant parents away from their children who are citizens – an answer that may have tugged at Leftist heartstrings, but left the drug problem unaddressed.Clinton danced all night. When moderator Chris Wallace quoted her earlier statement saying she wanted open borders, Clinton turned the question into one about Wikileaks, and pressed Trump over whether he would condemn Russia, which she insisted was behind the leaks, for meddling in an American election. “That was a great pivot,” Trump noted drily, “from her wanting open borders.”Once Clinton had brought up Putin, Trump bored in, charging: “She doesn’t like Putin because Putin has outsmarted her in every way.” In response, Clinton promised to work with our allies all over the world. That highlighted her campaign’s nagging contradiction again, leaving unanswered the question of why the world is so aflame today after eight years of Barack Obama, who came into office with similar promises to mend America’s relationships with friends and foes alike globally – promises that were taken so seriously that he won the Nobel Peace Prize before he had done anything at all. (What’s left to give President Hillary Clinton as she begins her efforts to bring peace to our troubled world? Sainthood?)There was so much that he had heard before. Clinton promised to make the rich pay their fair share of taxes. Some enterprising and independent-minded historian should research the history of that shopworn phrase, used by so very many Democratic presidential candidates before Hillary. Who was the first to use it? Certainly not Barack Obama, although he made the same promise, or John Kerry or Al Gore, who did as well, or Hillary’s husband. Was it Mike Dukakis? Jimmy Carter? Harry Truman? Woodrow Wilson? Grover Cleveland? How far back does this phrase go, and why, after eight years of Barack Obama, are the poor soaked rich still not paying their fair share? If he couldn’t make them pony up, how will Hillary accomplish it?That was the rub, on all the issues Trump and Clinton discussed Wednesday evening. She pledged to eradicate the Islamic State, whereupon Trump noted that it was the vacuum created in Iraq by the precipitous Obama/Clinton withdrawal from Iraq that led to the creation of ISIS in the first place. Trump pointed out that the U.S. is pouring money into Syrian rebel groups of doubtful reliability, and noted that if they overthrow Assad (“and he is a bad guy”), Syria might end up with a regime’s worse than Assad, and noted that the chaos in Syria has “caused the great migration, the great Trojan Horse,” with “many ISIS-aligned” coming into the U.S. “Thanks a lot Hillary,” he said acidly, “thanks a lot for doing a great job.”Indeed. If she didn’t get all this right when she was Secretary of State, how can Americans be confident she will get it right the next time, particularly when all she is offering is more of the same, more of the same failed foreign policies that have gotten the world into the fix it’s in today -- with the centerpiece being the denial of the nature, magnitude and motivating ideology of the jihad threat?That is what is ultimately the choice Americans face: more of the same, or a drastic change of course. If Hillary Clinton is elected president, and the mainstream media is in a frenzy to do all it can to make sure that she is, Americans will at very least know what they’re getting, and a great many of them will applaud it. Ultimately, however, politically correct fantasies will collapse under the weight of reality. If that happens while she is president, there will be more of the same in another way as well: many Americans who applauded her platitudes, generalities, and appeals to sentiment on Wednesday night will be looking for ways to blame the Republicans.

Robert SpencerSource: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/264561/third-debate-what-kind-country-are-we-going-be-robert-spencer Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Turning a blind eye to the dangers within.

Currently, the West is being confronted with foreboding challenges by Islamic States and Islamist groups of one kind or another, all of which view Western democracy and the Western way of life with abhorrence. Perversely, no matter how provocative and despicable the behavior and pronouncements of such entities, the general response of the prevailing Western intelligentsia and some of their governments ranges from sheer indifference and/or disbelief to a search for offenses committed by their own countries in “provoking” an anti-Western animus and, finally, to the actual proffering of assistance to the Jihadists.

While the majority of individual Muslims in the West are decent, law-abiding citizens, the nature of their communal structures and leadership gives rise to concerns that are briskly swept under the carpet. Many, if not most, mosques are officiated by imams trained abroad in madrasas that inculcate a belligerent attitude to Western values and lifestyles, which, in turn, gives rise to Islamic extremism. To the Muslim communities’ credit, Islamist groups have usually been small in size, drawing on only a limited number of active adherents. The Islamists do, however, pose serious security threats and are potentially capable of inflicting appreciable harm.

What compounds the problem is the fact that too few Muslim community leaders are genuinely utterly and unequivocally appalled by any manifestation of Islamic terrorism, no matter who the slain and injured happen to be. In the wake of the slaying on October 2, 2015, of a NSW police department employee by a young Muslim gunman, the Grand Mufti of Australia rationalized the incident as being due to “racism, Islamophobia, curtailing freedoms through securitization, duplicitous foreign policies and military intervention.”[1] Needless to say, the Grand Mufti made no reference to any features within his own Muslim community that could possible engender terrorism.

Such an analysis chimes in with the prevailing views of left-inclined intellectuals who assume that, in the West, Muslims are invariably victims of racism and Islamophobia. What deeply troubles the intellectual elite is that even the slightest disapprobation of any feature of Muslim society is taken as a breach of the spirit of multiculturalism, calling into question the notion that all cultures and societies are equally valid and are entitled to respect. Of all communities, the intellectual elite are particularly protective of and sensitive to the needs of the Muslim one, which they perceive to be especially exposed to wanton discrimination and harassment. One might add, that in virtually all advanced countries, the Muslim community is a strong supporter of left-wing parties and is ardently wooed by them.

The intellectuals’ fantasy of practically all Muslims in the West being hounded by hostile bigots is one that is widely shared but not well substantiated. In the United States the FBI disclosed that of the 1,149 anti-religious hate crimes committed in 2014, only 16.1% were directed against Muslims. By contrast, 56.8% of such offenses were inflicted on Jews without causing any disquiet whatsoever in left-wing or liberal circles.[2] In France all religious-based murders of Jews have been carried out by Muslims and in the wider Western community members of the general public have lost their lives in indiscriminate Islamist outrages perpetrated in New York, San Bernardino, London, Madrid, Paris, Brussels Orlando and Nice. If truth be told, within the West, it is mainly non-Muslims rather than Muslims, who have been encountering loss of life and limb as a result of hate crimes instigated by Islamist fanatics. However, whenever an act of Islamic terrorism occurs, Western political leaders regularly deny that such deeds are in anyway linked to Islam.If the Western elite are reluctant to concede that murderous actions have and are being undertaken by terrorists deriving direct inspiration from the Koran, it should come as no surprise that they also tend to turn a blind eye to other unsavory modes of behavior practiced in Muslim circles. Take the case of female genital mutilation that, according to the World Health Organization, has been inflicted on “more than 200 million girls and women alive today,” including Muslim women living in Western countries.[3] In the UK, for instance, hospitals treat at least fifteen cases per day.[4] Although female genital mutilation has been illegal in the UK since 1984, there has yet to be a single conviction. One would have thought that the feminist movement would have risen in protest against such practices, but with few notable exceptions, such as the organization Womankind Worldwide, Western feminists have generally manifested complete indifference. As far as an icon of the feminist movement, Germaine Greer, is concerned, attempts to outlaw the practice amount to “an attack on cultural identity.”[5]

Likewise, there is a general lack of concern and even cover up of the plight of women molested in the West by Muslim men. The situation is currently most acute in Germany and Sweden where the police, government and media make every effort to suppress reports of such incidents. Typically, the victim is blamed for either walking alone at night or wearing what in Muslim eyes are provocative clothes. Jacob Augstein, a columnist for the German magazine Der Speigel, would have it that migrants who assault German women and children are simply rebelling against German power structures for they are inferior to their victims in “language, nationality, education, social status, wealth, legal certainty and self-confidence.” Germans who dare to criticize such assaults are racists.[6]

Sadly, not only adult women have been targeted, but so too have girls, some as young as nine. It has recently been disclosed that, over a period of sixteen years, in the UK city of Rotherham, more than 1,400 girls had been routinely sexually assaulted by Muslim gangs. But in fear of being “labelled as racist,” both the police and the Rotherham City Councilors turned a blind eye to the transgressions.[7] What all this boils down to is that normally decent people guided by the tenets of multiculturalism vigorously upheld by the tyranny of political correctness, would far sooner jeopardize any care and protection of vulnerable female children than be seen by “decent society” to be casting aspersions on any segment, good or bad, of the Muslim community.

As deplorable as is the process of turning a blind eye to or tolerating Islamic behavior at variance with Western values, nothing is more egregious than Western radicals actually allying themselves or showing sympathy with Islamic Jihadists. On September 21, 2001, in Britain, a country depicted by the Economist as being “the heartland of the leftist-Muslim partnership,”[8] a formal alliance was formed between extreme leftists of various hues with the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) linked to the international Muslim Brotherhood. (The MAB’s spokesman, Azzam Tamimi, had expressed to the BBC his personal willingness to become a suicide bomber.)[9] What makes for such an improbable association between ardent atheists and religious fanatics is their common detestation of open Western democracies, of capitalism, of Jews and of America and Israel in particular. Rather than rallying the West to overcome Islamic terror, the Western intelligentsia would have their countries tamely accept a growing swell of Muslim migrants from whose ranks Islamists could draw upon. On January 30, 2016, a Green Party stalwart, Dr. Stefanie von Berg, in addressing the Hamburg City Council, declared: “Our city will change radically. I hold that in 20, 30 years there will no longer be a German majority in our city … And I want to make it very clear, especially to those right wingers. This is a good thing.”[10] If such a supine acceptance of the undermining of indigenous Western populations continues, Western civilization will be overthrown not but superior military might but by a lack of will on the part of the West to withstand threats to its existence.

Endnotes:1. The Australian, November 17, 2015. 2. Judith Bergman, Gatestone Institute, January 5, 2016.3. World Health Organisation, Fact Sheet, February 2016, appearing on http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/4. Soeren Kern 2015 op cit.5. As quoted by the BBC News November 25, 1999.6. As quoted by Soeren Kern, Gatestone Institute, March 5, 2016.7. Martin Evens, “Rotherham council ignored child abuse by Asian gangs because of 'misplaced political correctness', report concludes.”8. “Muslims and Socialists: With Friends Like These.” The Economist, February 8, 2007.9. Ghaffar Hussain, “An unlikely Alliance,” The Guardian, September 30, 200810. “Muslims and Socialists: With Friends Like These.” The Economist, February 8, 2007.

Prior to his retirement, the author had been an associate professor of economics at Sydney’s Macquarie University.

Leslie Stein is the author of “Israel Since the Six Day War: Tears of Joy, Tears of Sorrow.”Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/264545/western-intelligentsia-and-islamist-threat-leslie-stein Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Obama fiercely opposes the mass Sunni expulsion, seeing it as an
attempt by the Shiite Iraqi prime minister to cleanse Iraq’s second city
of its Sunni inhabitants and using the Mosul offensive against ISIS as a
pretext for such action.

A major dispute on combat tactics which has sprung up between
Washington and Baghdad hangs over the coalition’s Mosul offensive after
three days of combat. Thursday, Oct. 20, President Barack Obama and US
commanders challenged Iraq’s Shiite Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi and
is generals over a 500km long route, the Ba’aj Road, which does not
appear on maps, but is pivotal for the offensive’s continuation, debkafile’s exclusive military and intelligence sources report.

This route is a kind of “Burma road” developed by the Islamic State
as a private corridor between Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa, the terrorist
group’s Syrian capital, during the terrorist group’s two years of
control. It runs through the Iraqi town of Tal Afar before crossing into
Syria and passing south of areas controlled by Syrian Kurdish militias,
among which US special operations forces are embedded.
The argument flared over a demand by President Obama and US commanders
that Iraqi government forces turn to the Syrian border and block the
Ba’aja Road, and so cut off the ISIS fighters’ escape route from Mosul
to Syria. The Americans can’t bomb the corridor because it is also
packed with a stream of refugees in flight from the fighting in Mosul.

So long as it is open, ISIS is free to move thousands of fighters and
masses of weapons, ammunition and other supplies between its two
strongholds. This freedom of action, Obama warned Al-Abadi, would
prolong the Mosul operation beyond the Dec. 20 deadline set by the
coalition for its termination.

However, according to our sources, the Iraqi prime minister countered
this demand with a proviso unacceptable to Washington. He was prepared
to order Iraqi forces to block the Ba’aja Road provided Mosul’s entire
population of 750,000 Sunni Muslims was expelled from the city. He
argued that ISIS could not be defeated until then because the Sunnis
were supporting and collaborating with the Islamist terrorists.

Obama fiercely opposes the mass Sunni expulsion, seeing it as an
attempt by the Shiite Iraqi prime minister to cleanse Iraq’s second city
of its Sunni inhabitants and using the Mosul offensive against ISIS as a
pretext for such action.EXCLUSIVE: Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani greets Shiite fighters outside Mosul.debkafile’s sources
add that Al-Abadi has found support for his side of the argument with
the arrival of the Iranian Al Qods chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani at the
command posts of the pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiite militias, who have not yet
been thrown into the Mosul battle.
The Mosul offensive came up in the third US presidential debate in Las
Vegas early Thursday. The Republican candidate Donald Trump, who
appeared to have been updated on the state of play there, commented that
the big winner from that offensive would be Iran.
Our military sources report that three days of combat have not brought
any major coalition forces advances against ISIS. On some sectors Iraqi
forces are moving forward slowly, backed by US air strikes and rocket
artillery fire; on others, they are stalled by Islamist resistance.

debkaFileSource: http://debka.com/article/25723/Obama-vs-Baghdad-on-Sunni-cleansing-of-Mosul- Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Tensions between Moscow and Washington grow as U.S. and
U.K. mull imposing fresh sanctions on Syria and its allies • Russian
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warns tougher Western sanctions
will prompt "asymmetrical and aggressive moves."

Russia will use "painful" countermeasures to
respond to any new financial sanctions imposed on it by the U.S. and
other Western countries, a top Russian official warned Wednesday.

Britain and the United States said on Sunday
they were considering imposing additional sanctions on Syrian President
Bashar Assad and his supporters for their actions in Syria's
long-running civil war.

"If the U.S. opts to further toughen sanctions
in defiance of common sense and in disregard of its experience that has
already been quite painful for them, then we will find measures in our
toolbox that will have a painful impact, particularly in terms of
America's positioning in the world," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Ryabkov was quoted by the state-run RT news network as saying Wednesday.

Ryabkov was speaking at a meeting of the
deputies of the Russian State Duma ahead of a vote on a bill suspending
the Russian-American deal on reprocessing weapons-grade plutonium. He
told lawmakers that the toughening of U.S. sanctions against Russia
would lead to "asymmetrical and aggressive moves."

According to the nuclear agreement, Moscow and
Washington are required to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium taken
from decommissioned warheads originally intended to be used in nuclear
weapons.

Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir
Putin decided to waive the implementation of the deal amid growing
tensions with Washington after the Russia-U.S.-brokered cease-fire in
Syria's embattled city of Aleppo collapsed in September.

The escalating violence in Syria has
exacerbated the already fragile relations between Washington and Moscow,
which have been trading barbs over the collapsed truce. The U.S.
accused Russia of not living up to its commitments under the Sept. 9
deal to halt fighting and ensure that aid reached the besieged
population, while Russia said U.S.-led coalition strikes against the
Islamic State group killed more than 60 Syrian soldiers in eastern
Syria.

"I believe that Islam does not belong to Germany. I regard it as a
foreign entity which has brought the West more problems than benefits.
In my opinion, many followers of this religion are rude, demanding and
despise Germany."

More than 1.5 million Germans, many of them highly educated, left Germany during the past decade. — Die Welt.

Germany is facing a spike in migrant crime, including an epidemic
of rapes and sexual assaults. Mass migration is also accelerating the
Islamization of Germany. Many Germans appear to be losing hope about the
future direction of their country.

"We refugees... do not want to live in the same country with you.
You can, and I think you should, leave Germany. And please take Saxony
and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) with you.... Why do you not go to
another country? We are sick of you!" — Aras Bacho an 18-year-old Syrian
migrant, in Der Freitag, October 2016.

A real estate agent in a town near Lake Balaton, a popular
tourist destination in western Hungary, said that 80% of the Germans
relocating there cite the migration crisis as the main reason for their
desire to leave Germany.

"I believe that Islam does not belong to Germany. I regard it as a
foreign entity which has brought the West more problems than benefits.
In my opinion, many followers of this religion are rude, demanding and
despise Germany." — A German citizen who emigrated from Germany, in an
"Open Letter to the German Government."

"I believe that immigration is producing major and irreversible
changes in German society. I am angry that this is happening without the
direct approval of German citizens. ... I believe that it is a shame
that in Germany Jews must again be afraid to be Jews." — A German
citizen who emigrated from Germany, in an "Open Letter to the German
Government."

"My husband sometimes says he has the feeling that we are now the
largest minority with no lobby. For each group there is an institution,
a location, a public interest, but for us, a heterosexual married
couple with two children, not unemployed, neither handicapped nor
Islamic, for people like us there is no longer any interest." — "Anna,"
in a letter to the Mayor of Munich about her decision to move her family
out of the city because migrants were making her life there impossible.

A growing number of Germans are abandoning neighborhoods in which
they have lived all their lives, and others are leaving Germany for
good, as mass immigration transforms parts of the country beyond
recognition.

Data from the German statistics agency, Destatis, shows
that 138,000 Germans left Germany in 2015. More are expected to
emigrate in 2016. In a story on brain drain titled, "German talent is
leaving the country in droves," Die Weltreported that more than 1.5 million Germans, many of them highly educated, left Germany during the past decade.

The statistics do not give a reason why Germans are emigrating, but
anecdotal evidence indicates that many are waking up to the true cost —
financial, social and cultural — of Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision
to allow more than one million mostly Muslim migrants to enter the
country in 2015. At least 300,000 more migrants are expected to arrive
in Germany in 2016, according to Frank-Jürgen Weise, the head of the country's migration office, BAMF.

Mass migration has — among many other problems — contributed to a
growing sense of insecurity in Germany, which is facing a spike in
migrant crime, including an epidemic
of rapes and sexual assaults. Mass migration is also accelerating the
Islamization of Germany. Many Germans appear to be losing hope about the
future direction of their country.

At the height of the migrant crisis in October 2015, some 800
citizens gathered at a town hall meeting in Kassel/Lohfelden to protest a
unilateral decision by the local government to set up migrant shelters
in the city. The President of Kassel, Walter Lübcke, responded
by telling those who disagree with the government's open-door
immigration policy that they are "free to leave Germany at any time."

This attitude was echoed in an audacious essay published in October 2016 by the newspaper Der Freitag,
(also published by Huffington Post Deutschland, which subsequently
deleted the post). In the article, an 18-year-old Syrian migrant named
Aras Bacho called on Germans who are angry about the migrant crisis to
leave Germany. He wrote:

"We refugees... are fed up with the angry citizens (Wutbürger). They insult and agitate like crazy.... There are always these incitements by unemployed racists (Wutbürgern),
who spend all their time on the Internet and wait until an article
about refugees appears on the Internet. Then it starts with shameless
comments...."Hello, you unemployed angry citizens (Wutbürger) on the
Internet. How educated are you? How long will you continue to distort
the truth? Do you not know that you are spreading lies every day? What
would you have done if you were in their shoes? Well, you would have run
away!"We refugees... do not want to live in the same country with you. You
can, and I think you should, leave Germany. And please take Saxony and
the Alternative for Germany (AfD) with you."Germany does not fit you, why do you live here? Why do you not go to
another country? If this is your country, dear angry citizens (Wutbürger),
then behave normal. Otherwise you can simply flee from Germany and look
for a new home. Go to America to Donald Trump, he will love you very
much. We are sick of you!"

In May 2016, the newsmagazine, Focus, reported
that Germans have been moving to Hungary. A real estate agent in a town
near Lake Balaton, a popular tourist destination in western Hungary,
said that 80% of the Germans relocating there cite the migration crisis
as the main reason for their desire to leave Germany.

An anonymous German citizen who emigrated from Germany recently wrote
an "Open Letter to the German Government." The document, which was
published on the website Politically Incorrect, states:

"A few months ago I emigrated from Germany. My decision
was not for economic gain but primarily because of my dissatisfaction
with the current political and social conditions in my homeland. In
other words, I think that I and especially my offspring may lead a
better life somewhere else. 'Better' for me in this context is primarily
a life of freedom, self-determination and decent wages with respect to
taxation."I do not, however, want to close the door behind me quietly and just
go. I would hereby like to explain in a constructive way why I decided
to leave Germany.1. "I believe that Islam does not belong to Germany. I regard it as a
foreign entity which has brought the West more problems than benefits.
In my opinion, many followers of this religion are rude, demanding and
despise Germany. Instead of halting the Islamization of Germany (and the
consequent demise of our culture and freedom), most politicians seem to
me to be more concerned about getting reelected, and therefore they
prefer to ignore or downplay the Islam problem.2. "I believe that German streets are less secure than they should be
given our technological, legal and financial opportunities.3. "I believe that the EU has a democratic deficit which limits my influence as a democratic citizen.4. "I believe that immigration is producing major and irreversible
changes in German society. I am angry that this is happening without the
direct approval of German citizens, but is being dictated by you to
German citizens and the next generation.5. "I believe that the German media is increasingly giving up its
neutrality, and that freedom of expression in this country is only
possible in a limited way.6. "I believe that in Germany sluggards are courted but the diligent are scourged.7. "I believe that it is a shame that in Germany Jews must again be afraid to be Jews."

Many Germans have noted the trend toward reverse integration, in
which German families are expected to adapt to the customs and mores of
migrants, rather than the other way around.

On October 14, the Munich-based newspaper Tageszeitungpublished
a heartfelt letter from "Anna," a mother of two, who wrote about her
decision to move her family out of the city because migrants were making
her life there impossible. In the letter, addressed to Munich Mayor
Dieter Reiter, she wrote:

"Today I want to write you a kind of farewell letter (Abschiedsbrief) about why I and my family are leaving the city, even though probably no one cares."I am 35 years old, living here with my two young sons and my husband
in an upscale semi-detached house with parking. So you could say we are
very well off for Munich standards.... We live very well with plenty of
space and next to a green park. So why would a family like us decide to
leave the city? ...."I assume that your children do not use public facilities, that they
do not use public transportation, and that they do not attend public
schools in "problem areas." I also assume that you and other politicians
rarely if ever go for walks here."So on a Monday morning I attended a neighborhood women's breakfast
that was sponsored by the City of Munich. Here I met about 6-8 mothers,
some with their children. All of the women wore headscarves and none of
them spoke German. The organizers of the event quickly informed me I
will probably find it hard to integrate myself here (their exact
words!!!). I should note that I am German. I speak fluent German and I
do not wear a headscarf. So I smiled a little and said I would try to
integrate myself. Unfortunately, I brought a salami and ham sandwich to
the breakfast, to which everyone was asked to bring something. So of
course I had even less chance of integrating."I was not able to speak German to anyone at this women's breakfast,
which is actually supposed to promote integration, nor was anyone
interested in doing so. The organizers did not insist on anyone speaking
German, and the women, who appeared to be part of an established
Arab-Turkish group, simply wanted to use the room."I then asked about the family brunch.... I was advised that the
brunch would be held in separate rooms. Men and women separately. At
first I thought it was a bad joke. Unfortunately, it was not. ...."So my impression of these events to promote integration is
miserable. No interchange takes place at all!!! How can the City of
Munich tolerate such a thing? In my view, the entire concept of these
events to promote integration must be called into question.... I was
informed that I am not allowed to include pork in my child's lunchbox!!!
Hello?! We are in Germany here! ...."In summary, I find conditions here that make me feel that we are not
really wanted here. That our family does not really fit in here. My
husband sometimes says he has the feeling that we are now the largest
minority with no lobby. For each group there is an institution, a
location, a public interest, but for us, a heterosexual married couple
with two children, not unemployed, neither handicapped nor Islamic, for
people like us there is no longer any interest."When I mentioned at my son's preschool that we are considering
moving out of the city and I told them the reasons why, I was vigorously
attacked by the school's leadership. Because of people like us, they
said, integration does not work, precisely because we remove our
children. At least two other mothers have become wildly abusive. The
management has now branded me "xenophobic.""This is exactly the reason why people like me lose their patience
and we choose to vote for other political parties.... Quite honestly, I
have traveled half the world, have more foreign friends than German and
have absolutely no prejudices or aversions to people because of their
origin. I have seen much of the world and I know that the way
integration is done here will cause others to come to the same
conclusion as we have: either we send our children to private schools
and kindergartens, or we move to other communities. Well then, so
long!!!!!!!!!!!"

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.
He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based
Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9154/germans-leaving-germany Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Colombia is the classic case of, dare we say it, quid pro quo. The people of Colombia were used as pawns in yet another Clinton pay-for-play scheme.

That the Clinton Foundation’s operations are nothing but a cash cow scam is seen in a brilliant analysis and exposé of its operations in Colombia, a country beset by internal strife and an ongoing battle with drug cartels. The truth, as reported by Ken Silverman and the American Media Institute in Fusion, a joint venture of ABC and Univision, hardly Trump surrogates, explains in part how the Clintons amassed a small fortune without holding any job or running any business:

Colombia should be the Clinton Foundation’s best case study. Ground zero for the drug wars of the 1980s and 90s, racked by uneven development and low-intensity conflict for half a century, Colombia has received more foundation money and attention than any other nation outside the United States. Bill and Hillary Clinton have visited the country often and enjoy close relationships with members of Colombia’s ruling party. Colombia has also been home to the vast oil and natural gas holdings of the man who is reportedly the Clinton Foundation’s largest individual donor, Canadian financier Frank Giustra….Many of the Colombian “success stories” touted on the foundation’s website -- the ones specific enough for us to track down -- were critical about the foundation’s effect on their lives. Labor leaders and progressive activists say foundation programs caused environmental harm, displaced indigenous people, and that it concentrated a larger share of Colombia’s oil and natural gas reserves in the hands of Giustra…We interviewed young women in the foundation’s job-training programs; female business owners who sought help from its programs; workers who toiled for the foundation’s biggest individual donor’s firms; indigenous fisherman who were promised jobs and aid; and union leaders, social-justice activists, and progressive lawmakers. Some say they lost money. Others said they were used as props. Still others simply thought that the foundation had wasted a lot of their time. “They are doing nothing for workers,” one Colombian union official told us, with disgust. “I don’t even know what they are doing in this country other than exploiting poverty and extracting money.”

When we met him (Senator Jorge Enrique Robledo) in his wood-paneled office in Colombia’s Capitol building in May, his desk was stacked high with papers related to Pacific Rubiales’s labor practices, the result of years of investigative work by his staff. He did not see the Clinton Foundation and its partnership with Giustra’s Pacific Rubiales as either progressive or positive. “The territory where Pacific Rubiales operated,” he said, thumbing through pages of alleged human-rights violations, “was a type of concentration camp for workers.”…In September 2005, Giustra and Clinton flew to Kazakhstan together to meet the Central Asian nation’s president. Shortly thereafter, Giustra secured a lucrative concession to mine Kazakh uranium, despite his company’s lack of experience with the radioactive ore. As Bill Clinton opened doors for Giustra, the financier gave generously to Clinton’s foundation.

Colombia is the classic case of, dare we say it, quid pro quo. The people of Colombia were used as pawns in yet another Clinton pay-for-play scheme. You scratch the backs of the Clinton’s will scratch yours. The media will ignore it as the Clintons profit from it.

Rafael Cabargas, a legendary local oil-worker’s union leader who was arrested during a strike at a Pacific Rubiales operation in 2011, was equally dismissive of the Clinton Foundation’s and Giustra’s activities in Colombia. We interviewed him in a tiny, cluttered union office in one of Cartagena’s poor, outlying neighborhoods. “They are doing nothing for workers,” he said with disgust. “I don’t even know what they are doing in this country other than exploiting poverty and extracting money.”

How is it, Secretary Clinton, that the Clinton Foundation accepted donations from countries and individuals that support the execution of homosexuals, throwing them off buildings and who support Sharia Law and state-sponsored suppression and abuse of women and their rights? How is it that human rights took second place behind your just for donor contributions?AsInvestor’s Business Daily editorialized, donations to the Clinton Foundation even played a factor in the refusal of Hillary Clinton’s State Department to designate Nigeria’s Boko Haram as a terrorist organization for two years:

Hillary's emails may be only the tip of an iceberg that could include Clinton Foundation donations to shield Boko Haram from being designated a terrorist group and her brother's involvement in a Haitian gold mine…Last month, the Washington Post reported on another deal involving Rodham that could prove politically embarrassing and damaging for his sister. It seems that he sits on the board of a company that got a coveted gold-mining contract from the government of Haiti after the Clinton Foundation sponsored relief work in Haiti.In interviews with the Post, both Rodham and the chief executive of Delaware-based VCS Mining said they were introduced at a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, which seems more and more to be an unseemly mix of charitable work with the political and business interests of Clinton Foundation donors.And then there's Hillary's strange dealings regarding the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram, which just recently pledged its allegiance to the ever-expanding Islamic State...Last May, we wondered why for two years on Hillary Clinton's watch the State Department refused to designate a Nigerian Islamist group as a terrorist organization. This group has murdered thousands as it wages a real war on women. As Josh Rogin at the Daily Beast reports, the Clinton State Department "refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011" after the group bombed the United Nations headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria.Sen. David Vitter, R-La., sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry last week asking for all of Hillary's records relating to Boko Haram and her reluctance to designate it a foreign terrorist organization.Vitter also requested all of Hillary's communications with Gilbert Chagoury, a Nigerian construction tycoon who has donated millions to the Clinton Foundation. Vitter noted that Chagoury had a financial interest in the potential impact of designating Boko Haram a terrorist groupHow many of the more than 30,000 "personal" emails that Hillary deleted from her private account relate to these matters? Is that why she needed a private email server?

Yet, for some reason, the slush fund that is the Clinton Foundation has been ignored by a “rigged” media that obsesses more about Trump talking dirty than Hillary Clinton using her various offices for personal gain. Corruption has been a Clinton hallmark. The Clintons have made a career of making a fortune on the dime of a public they intentionally deceive and defraud, using their positions of power to enrich themselves at the public’s expense.Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications. Daniel John SobieskiSource: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/10/the_clinton_foundation_colombia_scam.html Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

“Temple denial has become a central tenet of Palestinian nationalism.”

“Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.”

That observation can be found
at the beginning of the Constitution of the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). What was true when
UNESCO was established shortly after the end of a devastating world war
remains true seven decades later, when UNESCO is busy fanning the flames
of religious passions that could set all of the Middle East ablaze.
With its recently-passed resolution
that deliberately ignores the Jewish—and therefore also the
Christian—connection to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, UNESCO has effectively
endorsed the views of Mohammed Hussein, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,
who threatened
a few years ago: “If the Israelis come here [to the Temple Mount] it
will be more than an intifada…The whole region will be engulfed by war.”
A year ago, the Grand Mufti repeated
this threat, adding ominously that violence could “reach the entire
world” if Jews, or any non-Muslims, were ever allowed to pray anywhere
at “the al-Aqsa Mosque compound,” i.e. the entire Temple Mount
esplanade.

It was also a year ago that the Grand Mufti asserted
in an interview with an Israeli TV program that there had never been a
Jewish temple on the Temple Mount, while the al-Aqsa mosque had been
there “3,000 years ago, and 30,000 years ago…since the creation of the
world.” As absurd as this may sound to Western ears considering the
archaeological evidence to the contrary, it is important to understand
that “Temple denial” is no fringe view
among Palestinians and Muslims in general: The late Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat was not the least bit embarrassed to deny the historic
existence of the Jewish temples in Jerusalem during the Camp David
negotiations in July 2000, and his successor Mahmoud Abbas as well as
other Palestinian officials and religious leaders have repeated similar
claims often enough to justify the conclusion, as the author Daniel
Levin wrote in The Forward in 2009, that “Temple denial has become a central tenet of Palestinian nationalism.”

But while Temple denial has become popular in recent decades, the
usefulness of inciting religious passions to mobilize Muslims for the
fight against Jews and Zionism was first realized by Haj Amin
al-Husseini, the notorious Palestinian leader whose alliance with Nazi Germany eventually earned him the epithet “Hitler’s Mufti.” Husseini started his career
as a political and religious leader in the 1920s with an ambitious
campaign to raise funds for the renovation of the Muslim shrines on the
Temple Mount, which were in utter disrepair because the Muslim rulers of
the Ottoman Empire allowed Jerusalem to languish for centuries as a neglected backwater. In order to convince potential donors of the importance of his project, Husseini claimed
that Zionism envisaged the “rebuilding of the Temple that is called
Solomon’s Temple in place of the blessed Al-Aksa Mosque and the
conducting of religious worship in it.” Soon enough, this utterly
spurious accusation was used not just to raise funds, but also to incite
deadly violence against the Jews—a tactic that has by now cost
thousands of Jewish lives, starting with the murderous Arab riots of 1929, to the bloody “Al-Aqsa intifada” in the early 2000s and the wave of recent terror attacks.

Some of the rhetoric
that was used in the late 1920s to incite violence against Jews is not
all that different from the tenor of the recent UNESCO resolution. In
October 1928, the Muslim Supreme Council, which was headed by Husseini,
accused the Jews of “competition with the Moslems for the Holy Burak,
the Western Wall of the Mosque Al-Aqsa,” and declared:

Having realized by bitter experience the unlimited greedy
aspirations of the Jews in this respect, Moslems believe that the Jews’
aim is to take possession of the Mosque of Al-Aqsa gradually on the
pretence that it is the Temple, by starting with the Western Wall of
this place, which is an inseparable part of the Mosque of Al-Aqsa.

Almost 90 years later, UNESCO echoes this incitement: the text
[PDF] of the resolution refers to the Western Wall plaza only in scare
quotes while pretending the site is really the “Al-Buraq Plaza;” the
Temple Mount is exclusively referred to as “Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram
Al-Sharif,” which is described in its entirety as “a Muslim holy site of
worship.” Similar to the term “Al-Aqsa mosque compound”—a term that is
regularly used
by Al Jazeera to denote all of the Temple Mount—UNESCO’s exclusive use
of “Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif” fails to distinguish between the
actual al-Aqsa Mosque building at the southern edge of the Temple Mount
and the rest of the vast platform. But if all the Temple Mount is
“Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif” (or the “al-Aqsa Mosque compound”),
and if all of it is “a Muslim holy site of worship,” then the presence
of any Jew or any non-Muslim anywhere on the Temple Mount quickly
becomes an intolerable provocation that UNESCO sternly denounces as
“continuous Israeli aggressions.”

The praise
UNESCO received from Izzat al-Risheq, a spokesman for the Islamist
terror group Hamas, was therefore well-deserved: “We commend the vote at
the UNESCO that denied any historic claims between Jews and the al-Aqsa
Mosque and its Western Wall.” Likewise, Abbas can now rightly feel
validated by UNESCO in his view
that the Jews must not be allowed “to defile” al-Aqsa “with their
filthy feet” and that “every drop of blood that has been spilled for
Jerusalem…is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah.” And while
UNESCO denounces “continuous Israeli aggressions,” the supposedly
“moderate” Grand Mufti Abbas appointed ten years ago has not only denied
the existence of Jewish temples and repeatedly threatened war in order
to assert exclusive Muslim control of the Temple Mount, but he has also endorsed suicide bombings and approvingly quoted
the infamous Islamic prophecy that features prominently in the Hamas
charter, because it envisages a divinely ordained apocalyptical battle
in which Muslims kill almost all Jews.

Palestinian views on these issues haven’t changed all that much since
the days of the notorious Haj Amin al-Husseini, and with its recently
adopted resolution, UNESCO has rewarded almost a century of Palestinian
intransigence and deadly incitement.

Petra Marquardt-BigmanSource: http://www.thetower.org/4044-unescos-endorsement-of-temple-denial-isnt-just-inaccurate-its-dangerous/ Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

"Please, please, don't blow up our capital cities. We will
reject Jewish and Christian history and pretend Jesus chased the money
changers from the steps of Montmartre."

The UNESCO vote seems clearly
a response to the expansionist, jihadist aspirations of members of the
OIC who sponsored it: Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and
Sudan.

Some analysts consider a vote to abstain to be a victory for
Israel, but for Spain, Greece, France, Sweden, Slovenia, and Italy it
was blatant appeasement and fear of their own often-violent Muslim
minorities: "Please, please, don't blow up our capital cities. We will
reject Jewish and Christian history and pretend Jesus chased the money
changers from the steps of Montmartre."

UNESCO's Director General Irina Bokova had already announced her
opposition to the resolution, a position for which she received death
threats.

Having demonstrable historical fact, such as Jewish patrimony on
the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, subject to the whims of the UN, in which,
as the late Abba Eban said, Arabs could muster a majority to decide the
sun rises in the West, is not a positive proposition.

The question remains how to convince nations in the West to stand
for themselves in the face of Islamists committed to replacing them.

Last week, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) voted Christian and Jewish heritage off of the
Temple Mount in Jerusalem; Tuesday they ratified their perfidy. The vote
seems clearly a response to the expansionist, jihadist aspirations of
members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) that sponsored
it: Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Sudan. The vote,
and the behind the scenes machinations, deserve evaluation.Upfront:

Group 1: The "in favor" voters are a nasty collection of
corrupt, dictatorial, largely Islamist (traditional Islamic theology
gives Jews their place on the Temple Mount; these Islamists appear
intent on removing all traces of Christian and Jewish presence from the
Middle East) or Marxist, and unanimously frightening places. They are,
in the immortal words French diplomat Daniel Bernard applied to Israel, "shitty little countries." Even the big ones. But see below for a caveat.

Group 2: The US, UK, the Netherlands, Estonia Germany and
Lithuania had nothing to be ashamed of in the first round; they voted
"against." But see below for a caveat.

Group 3: Some analysts consider a vote to abstain to be a victory
for Israel, but for Spain, Greece, France, Sweden, Slovenia and Italy
it was blatant appeasement of Group 1 and fear of their own
often-violent Muslim minorities: "Please, please, don't blow up our
capital cities. We will reject Jewish and Christian history and pretend
Jesus chased the money changers from the steps of Montmartre."

If the West had stood for its own history, it would have mattered.
Democratic Japan and South Korea should have voted "against" as well.
There might be a narrow exception for India, which had never before
failed to vote in favor of an Arab-led anti-Israel resolution.

Group 4: Israel's friends in Africa were a disappointment --
Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Togo and Uganda abstained. Can
we dump on them? Yes, we can. Isn't it too much to expect African countries to stand on principle when Western European countries duck? No, it is not.
True, Israel will not make them pay for their "in favor" vote, but
countries that benefit from their relations with Israel in a profound and concrete way
(check especially Uganda and Ghana) can and should stand with Israel in
the face of Arab countries -- heirs to colonial Muslim slave-traders
and still practice slavery today -- who drained African coffers for oil
money and exported radical Islamic jihad to the continent. In this
hemisphere, Haiti, where IsrAID is for the second time promptly on the
ground to help Haitians recover from a natural disaster, is particularly
disappointing.

Mexico deserves special mention -- though whether as a good guy or a
bad guy is debatable. Mexico voted in favor of the resolution, although
the Mexican President had apparently told Israel it would vote against. When the time came, UN Ambassador Andreas Roemer received a directive from the Foreign Ministry to vote in favor. Opposing his country's position, Roemer left the room. His deputy cast the vote; the Ambassador has been relieved of his position.

After a weekend of machinations in Mexico City, including an
announcement by the Foreign Ministry that it was going to "investigate"
how the "in favor" vote actually happened (that should be long and
complicated, right?) Mexico announced its intention to reopen the vote
to change its position. This is permitted
under UNESCO rules; Israel had expected it; and UNESCO Executive Board
Chairman Michael Worbs was, apparently, planning to agree. UNESCO's
Director General Irina Bokova had already announced her opposition to
the resolution, a position for which she received death threats.

UNESCO
Director General Irina Bokova (left) received death threats after
announcing her opposition to a jihadist resolution. (Image source:
Wikimedia Commons/MDS)

But if you think the way was being cleared to erase this jihadist resolution, you would be mistaken.

According to later reports, the Arab bloc pressured Worbs to recuse himself from the vote, which he did. After that, Western
countries prevailed on Mexico not to request a reopening of the actual
vote for fear, they said, that other UNESCO resolutions would become
subject to new votes. So an ahistorical, anti-Semitic sop to countries
with little redeeming social value was allowed to stand for fear that
some other bit of UNESCO stupidity might be revisited. This tarnishes
other countries that might otherwise have had second thoughts and
changed their votes -- Brazil, in fact, moved from "in favor" to
"abstain."

Mexico instead decided also to amend its vote from "in favor" to
"abstain," accompanied by a statement from the Foreign Ministry that the
Mexican government recognizes "the undeniable connection of the Jewish
people to the cultural heritage in East Jerusalem."

Some Israelis prefer to see the UNESCO glass half-full:
26 countries voted for the resolution; 34 did not, whether by voting
against, abstaining or absenting themselves from the room.

Not good enough. Having demonstrable historical fact, such as Jewish
patrimony on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, subject to the whims of the
United Nations, in which, as the late Abba Eban said, Arabs could muster
a majority to decide the sun rises in the West, is not a positive
proposition. Pakistan, Nicaragua, Mozambique and Vietnam are not likely
ever to vote for historical accuracy on Jerusalem and Israel, nor are
China and Russia. France is a serial appeaser, more concerned about its
back than the truth. But Sweden, Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Ivory Coast,
Argentina, Paraguay, Nevis & St. Kitts and others should be loath to
relinquish their Judeo-Christian humanistic culture, roots and values
to jihadi pond scum.

The question remains how to convince nations in the West to stand for
themselves in the face of Islamists committed to replacing them.

Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9150/unesco-jerusalem-vote Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

If Hillary wins, this criminal attempt at bribery and obstruction of justice will be buried and forgotten

Obama and his State Department, with the assistance of the MSM, are trying to spin the State Department asking for reclassification of Hillary's emails in return for overseas slots as just a discussion with no wrongdoing involved. Obama stresses that the email was not reclassified and no overseas slots were given to the FBI.

Spin in D.C. is called lying outside D.C.This is absurd and legally nonsense. If I offer to bribe a police officer, it does not matter whether he accepts or not. If I tell a police officer, How about reclassifying the drunk driving charge to reckless driving? And by the way, you can use my condo for vacation, that is crime. Exactly the same occurred here. It does not matter if I only say, Do me a favor, and I will do you a favor. It does not matter if we did not go through with it.

The problem is that Obama and Hillary have gotten away with whatever they do, so this is nothing to them. They just shrug it off.According to the Washington Post on 10/18/16, quoting the FBI agent, the events are as follows:

"He said, 'Brian. Pat Kennedy. I need a favor,'" McCauley recalled in an interview Tuesday. "I said, 'Good, I need a favor. I need our people back in Baghdad."Then Kennedy, a longtime State Department official, explained what he wanted in return: "There's an email. I don't believe it has to be classified."

The agent, Brian McCauley, and the State Department official, Patrick Kennedy, a close aide to Hillary when she was secretary of state, act as if they were discussing trading baseball cards. The fact is, McCauley was conducting a criminal investigation of Hillary, and Kennedy was trying to get McCauley to reclassify an email. It is not up to the FBI to reclassify an email. The emails were classified when sent, so the opinion of McCauley is irrelevant, but it shows how desperate the Obama State Department was to reclassify an email to help Hillary. The FBI does not have the authority to reclassify an email that was classified when sent.Moreover, the emails were under subpoena by Congress, so the emails had to remain in the original untampered state. Thus, altering or attempting to alter the emails would be obstruction of justice.In criminal law, an attempt to commit a crime provides that steps were taken to carry out the attempt. Here, McCauley and Kennedy discussed and agreed upon the exchange. This is a criminal attempt. If we had a Justice Department, both would be charged. It would then be up to a court to decide if they are guilty. But the real issue is not criminal guilt in a court of law. The issue is that the Obama State Department tried to alter an email to help Hillary, and the voters have a right to know the facts before the election. It is the court of public opinion that matters.Obama seems desperate to bury this story. He belittled and joked about it, but he knows that it is serious if the truth comes out. If Hillary wins, this criminal attempt at bribery and obstruction of justice will be buried and forgotten.

There will be an investigation only if Trump wins. Only then will we learn what Obama and Hillary knew and when they knew it.

J. MarsoloSource: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/10/bribery_and_obstruction_of_justice_fbi_alteration_of_clinton_emails.html Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Archaeological evidence found at Jerusalem's Russian Compound paints a dramatic picture of the Roman battle to breach the city walls.

Archeological dig in Russian Compound

Antiquities Authority

Fascinating
evidence found at “the Third Wall” surrounding Jerusalem in the Second
Temple period reveals what the battleground was like on the eve of the
Great Jewish Revolt against the Romans (66-70 C.E.). The artifacts were
discovered by the Israel Antiquities Authority in the Russian Compound
in Jerusalem's city center, about a kilometer outside the present Old
City walls and where the new campus for Bezalel Arts Academy is to be
constructed.

The archaeologists found remnants of a tower that protruded from the
wall, Directly opposite the tower, they uncovered scores of rocks and
catapults that Roman battering rams hurled at the wall and the Jewish
defenders who stood atop the tower.

Dr. Rena Avner and Kfir Arviv, who carried out the dig under the
auspices of the Israel Antiquities Authority stated that, “this is
fascinating proof of the intensive shelling carried out by the Romans,
led by [General] Titus, in order to conquer the city and destroy the
Second Temple. By overcoming the defenders of the Third Wall, the Romans
were able to bring their battering rams close to the inner walls and
breach them as well." Titus later became emperor of Rome, partly due to
his finally becoming victorious in Jerusalem.

Flavius Josephus, the Jewish historian born Yosef Ben Matityahu
(37-c.100 CE) explains that the wall was intended to protect the newest
quarter of the city which had expanded north of its earlier
double-walled confines. The Third Wall was constructed by King Agrippa I
who stopped construction in order not to anger Roman Emperor Claudius,
and to diminish any doubts about his loyalty. The construction of the
Third Wall began again 20 years later, continued by the rebel group that
named itself Guardians of Jerusalem, in preparation for the Jewish
revolt against the Romans.

"Josephus detailed the route of the Third Wall, starting with the
Hippicus Tower, identified today as the Tower of David fortress. From
there, it went on northwards to the massive Pesephone Tower that
protected the northwest corner of the wall and from there, it turned
eastward..and descended to the grave of Queen Helena, the place known
today as the Tombs of the Kings," said Dr. Avner.

Archaeologists have been arguing over the identification of the Third
Wall and the precise urban borders of Jerusalem at the eve of the Roman
invasion under Titus since the beginning of the 20th century. The new
findings in the Russian Compound are the first evidence of a wall in
this area.

The artifacts will be on display at the 10th Conference for Research
in Archaeology of Jerusalem to take place on October 26th and 27th of
this year.

Arutz Sheva StaffSource: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/219155 Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.